RIPPLE SALVO… #549… More from the Stennis Senate Preparedness Investigating Sub-Committee report on the Vietnam air war published 31 August 1967… but first…
Good Morning: Day FIVE HUNDRED FORTY-NINE of a review of a thousand days of power projection in the Vietnam air war…
6 September 1967…HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a partly cloudy Wednesday in New York City…
SUMMER IN AMERICA 1967: Page 1: “Ford Leader Says Contract Parley Has Fallen Apart–Ruether Sees Exercise In Futility–Strike Tonight Regarded As Inevitable”...”…negotiations have ended…both sides say strike is inevitable.”… Page 20: “7,100 Students From Africa are Enrolling In U.S. Universities”... “…to help meet Africa’s need for trained manpower in government, agriculture and industry.”…Page 27: “Shift To Right Seen In Congress–Conservatives Say House Freshmen Lead ‘Backlash’ “… “and have generated a strong swing to the right in congress this year. ..strong reaction to the Johnson Administration’s programs–increased debt limit, rent-subsidies, food stamps, teacher corps.”… Page 37: “Medicaid Protest By Doctors Seen–Many are Said To Refuse To Treat Patients”... “Physicians are staging a mass protest against Medicaid because they are being paid their fees, the chairman of the Citizens Committee for Medicaid said yesterday…city accused of outright falsehoods concerning payments and said fewer physicians are participating than 17 months ago when the Medicaid program began. Between 1,385 and 4,000 of 17,000 physicians are participating.”… Page 37: “Pittsburg Group Boycotts School–Parents of 46 White Pupils Protest against Busing”... “Northside board of education is seeking to achieve balance.”… Page 38: “Slum Groups Seek Voice In Brooklyn Navy Yard Planning–Demand Control of Agency Developing Facility as an Industrial Park”... “Representatives of the eight Brooklyn antipoverty and community organizations demanded yesterday that residents of the slum neighborhoods around the Brooklyn Navy yard be given a controlling voice and seats on the board of directors of the Commerce Labor Industrial Corporation of Kings, the non-profit organization appointed to develop the yard. The Brooklyn group demanded 75% of the seats on the board.”… Page 38: “Black Community Planned By CORE”… “…from ground up…citing a black power manifesto, Floyd McKissick said the planned community is the future…’We will advocate a new black city to take youth out of the cities…so black kids can develop and learn.’ “…
VIETNAM: “U.S. Aides Forces Saigon Peace Step As Result of Vote–Broad Popular Sentiment for Settlement Expected To Have Policy Impact–But Doubts are Voiced–Officials Find No Indication That Hanoi and Vietcong Are Willing to Confer North Vietnam Vows to Fight On”… Page 1: “Loser In Vietnam To Appeal Result–Saigon Runner-Up Charges Fraud and Plans Protest In Constituent Assembly”… “Truong Dinh Dzu, the peace candidate who was the surprise runner-up in the presidential election said he would… try to upset the vote… says: ‘two thirds of Thieu’s vote was obtained by fraud.’ “…Page 1: “Fighting Rages In Vietnam”... “The bitterest fighting in two months broke out yesterday and today from the Mekong Delta to the northern provinces in the heaviest engagement, fighting continued tonight in the Queson Valley about 25 miles south of Danang. Fifty-four Marines have died in the area since yesterday morning. A Marine spokesman in Danang said that 160 North Vietnamese troops had been killed.
6 SEPTEMBER 1967…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times…Page 1: “FOE DOUBLES MISSILES SHIELD–PENTAGON FINDS SITES ROSE FROM 50 TO 100 IN A YEAR”… “North Vietnam has doubled its surface to air missile sites within the last year, Pentagon sources say. Those recently detected by aerial reconnaissance and other intelligence techniques are said to total about 100 up from 50 late last summer. The maximum number of missiles NVN is capable of firing at any one time is 500 to 600 grouped at 150 sites. some of the sites are standby emplacements available for mobile missile launching battalions. ‘These battalions can move in, set-up the launchers, fire and move on again in a 24-hour period.’ They move according to our flight patterns.’…Other missile sites, Pentagon sources say, contain dummy launchers and missiles to bring investigating aircraft into range of ground fire and to confuse photo reconnaissance planes. North Vietnam had fired 3,500 missiles in the air war but had hit only 76 airplanes–an average near 2%. Missiles only accounted for 10% of aircraft lost over North Vietnam. North Vietnam’s antiaircraft defense is now said to comprise 8,000 guns, an increase of 1,000 since the start of the year. Pilots with experience from World War II and Korea have termed that defense more lethal than anything encountered before…at the end of WWII Berlin was reported ringed by 450 antiaircraft guns of heavy caliber…In August 1944 war records show Britain had massed 2,114 antiaircraft guns to defend England… As of 31 August the United States has lost 666 aircraft shot down over North Vietnam and 202 aircraft shot down over South Vietnam, in addition to 370 helicopters. an additional 1,375 aircraft have been lost in accidents.”…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There was one aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 6 September 1967…
(1) LCOL NORRIS RAY SMITH was flying an O-1F of the 21st TASS and 504th TASG out of Nha Trang and was killed in an accidental crash near Pleiku.
RIPPLE SALVO… #549… The Stennis report on the air war hearings of August 1967…
“The Nature and Effect of Restrictions”…
“Formerly both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific forces maintained target lists which were used as the basis of planning for attacks on fixed targets. Targets on the JCS list could not be hit without the approval of the Secretary of Defense and other high civilian authority. As a result, during the entire year of 1966 less than one percent of the total sorties flown against North Vietnam were against fixed targets on the JCS target list. This clearly demonstrates the previous difficulty in obtaining approval for striking the more meaningful fixed targets. The Secretary of Defense has endeavored to leave the impression that the fixed targets on these lists are generally industrial-type targets. The fact is that some of the most important are key bridges, railroad repair shops, storage areas, vehicle repair shops, concentration yards, and other targets which are vital to the enemy’s transportation network and which he utilizes in moving material and supplies from the Port of Haiphong and the border of Red China through North Vietnam to South Vietnam for use against our troops and those of our allies.
“Recently the JCS and CINCPAC target lists have been combined into the operating target list. This now contains a total of 427 targets and, as of August 25, 1967, 359 of these have been recommended for strike and strikes had been authorized against 302. thus there were fifty-seven targets recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff against which strikes have not been flown.
“This addresses itself to only part of the picture. Many long-recommended targets were authorized for the first time in August 1967. As a matter of fact, Admiral Sharp had recommended 129 targets to Secretary McNamara when he briefed him in Saigon in July 1967. General Wheeler stated that as of August 9, 1967, there were 111 unauthorized targets and that JCS recommended that seventy of them be authorized for strike. The remaining forty-one, while retained on the target list, were not recommended at that time.
“It is important to stress that the target list discussed above by no means contains all of the fixed targets in North Vietnam. Targets are added from time to time as they are recognized as profitable and important military targets, and other targets are dropped from the list as they become inoperative.
“In addition, the authority to make an initial strike upon a target his not always sufficient. The North Vietnamese have shown a great and increasing capacity for repairing and restoring targets so that many targets, even though previously struck, are quickly regenerated, restored, and require restrike. Restrike authority was often not allowed, particularly with respect to important targets around Hanoi and Haiphong and in other sanctuary areas.
“Further, there are sanctuary areas in North Vietnam in which strikes are prohibited except with express prior approval from Washington civilian authority. These sanctuary areas obviously cannot be discussed at any length in this unclassified report. However, we do call attention to press reports of air strikes in recent weeks on targets in the buffer zone along the border of Red China for the first time. Many of these targets are vital to North Vietnam’s transportation net.
“The existence of the sanctuary areas in North Vietnam are not based exclusively on military considerations. These sanctuaries have enabled the North Vietnamese to concentrate their war-making material in these areas, which are safe and secure from bombing, and ready them for the dash southward over vulnerable land, rail, and water routes under cover of darkness and bad weather. Whether warranted or not, it is clear that the sanctuaries have reduced and curtailed the effectiveness of our air operations and reduced the impact of the bombing campaign upon the enemy’s ability to support the war and infiltrate men and material to the South. This is one of the reasons why, through January 1967, the application of our airpower was much less effective than it should have been.”….
RTR QUOTE for 6 September: EMERSON: “War, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men’s brains instead of their bowels.”
Lest we forget… Bear